Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,76
might do because it would never occur to him. A mistake so basic he never even thought about it.
If Jay was right about the technology and the possibility of using it in such a manner, then Morrison had had the means and opportunity, but what had the motive been?
“Any leads on where he went?” Howard asked.
“Not yet. The mainline ops are on the case, and we’ve got bulletins out to every state police agency in the U.S., as well as to the Canadian authorities. Flight plans in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest are all being checked.”
“I’m going to be out of here in a day or so,” Howard said. “I’ll get to the office—”
“You will go home, General. We will run this guy down doing the things we know how to do. What we haven’t done enough of lately—computer detection.”
“I’ll be okay to work.”
“Not according to your wife you won’t. We’ll keep you posted as to progress.”
Howard wasn’t happy with that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. They said their good-byes.
Michaels headed to Jay’s office. He tapped on the door and stuck his head into the room. Gridley was off-line. “Hey, Boss.”
“I just got off the com with John Howard. He is going to be okay, so the doctors tell him.”
Jay relaxed a little. “Good to hear it.”
“I trust you are well on the way to catching the man responsible for shooting our teammate?”
Jay smiled. “Oh, sure. Well on the way.”
“Which means?”
“We’ve got all his personal records. We know where he’s been and what he’s done that required use of his credit cards, or his driver’s license. We have his work records, too, but there are some gaps. He took out a second mortgage on his house and cleaned out his bank accounts, so he has a big chunk of cash, and not everybody requires ID for every transaction. He could have bought a cheap car, rented a private plane, maybe even gotten himself some phony ID for whatever.
“We have a description of the guy who was with Morrison from the guards at HAARP, but ‘your average-looking science geek’ isn’t a lot of help. No surveillance cameras managed to catch an image of ‘Dick Grayson,’ and it was ole Dick who must have done the shooting—unless Morrison has a stash of guns we don’t know about and also practiced his fast draw without anybody we talked to knowing about it.”
Jay smiled. “Hey, you know who Dick Grayson is?”
“Robin, the boy wonder,” Michaels said.
Jay looked disappointed, but he continued: “FBI field agents have questioned Morrison’s wife, and she doesn’t know anything. Really. According to the reports I just read, she isn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the string—she doesn’t know what her husband does for a living, and it is the opinion of the interviewing agents that she wouldn’t know HAARP from a harpoon.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. We have a respected scientist who apparently figured out how to drive people crazy using a giant walkie-talkie, then up and did it. We know when, and we think we sort of know generally how, but not why.”
“Conjecture?”
“I dunno, Boss. Doesn’t make any sense to me. Revenge, power, money—those are the big motivating factors that come to mind.”
Michaels said, “Anybody ever screw him over so bad he’d want this kind of revenge?”
“Not that I’ve seen. His ex-wife lives in Boston. If he wanted to get her, he missed by three thousand miles. No alimony, no kids, and the new trophy wife is a lot prettier, anyhow. He lost his funding on a research project, but got a higher paying job right after. ”
“Power?”
“Never had an ambition to run things, far as I can tell.”
“Money, then?”
“How does zapping a couple of Chinese villages and then downtown Portland get him rich? Extortion, maybe? But that wouldn’t be too bright, ’cause he’d have to know the authorities would be on his tail forever for multiple murder. He’d never be able to relax, it’s too high-profile. Too late for that now, anyhow, we have the gun. Ammunition is no good without it, and he can’t walk into another of these radio palaces and ask pretty please to use the transmitter, can he?”
No, it didn’t make a lot of sense.
Michaels had a sudden thought. “Suppose you wanted to buy a new computer system, something experimental, way ahead of what everybody else had?”
“Yeah?”
“How would you go about buying it if you weren’t sure what it would do?”
“Sit down and put it through its paces,” Jay said. “Crank it